This Administrative Core (Core A) will have two major functions. First, it will provide administrative support and intellectual enrichment for the investigators in this program. Due to the fact that the Program includes 5 senior investigators from two institutions (UCSD and the Burnham Institute) belonging to several Departments: Pediatrics, Medicine, Neuroscience, Pharmacology, Surgery (School of Medicine at UCSD), Biomedical Engineering (UCSD), Computer Science and the Burnham Research Institute. Because of this and the multi-disciplinary nature of the Program, a central administrative core is essential. The Core will work closely with the Administration of the two major institutions, as well as administrators, business managers, and scientists in each Department involved. The Administrative Core will assist individual investigators in budgeting as well as coordinate travel, purchasing, meetings and seminars. The second function of the Administrative Core will be to provide and encourage intellectual collaboration between members of the Program Project, faculty within the University (who are not members of this Program Project), and outside consultants. The Core will achieve these objectives in two ways: A) We will have a monthly two-hour seminar for all investigators in this Program. Research progress will be presented by one of the Program's investigators during each seminar. This will average about 10-12 seminars per year and about 2-3 per Project/year. We will also have the Directors of Cores B and C present new data analytical techniques, systems biology re-construction of molecular studies, flux analysis of metabolites etc.... B) The Program Project plans to have outside experts'visit each year as consultants, at least one of the Project groups. The role of the consultant will be to work directly with his/her host, to advise regarding their progress, to suggest possible new directions for both the individual Projects and potentially the overall Program. In addition, we propose also to have mid-term whole day symposium during which we invite consultants whose work is on some aspects of the research of each Project. During these workshops, each of the Pis presents their progress over the preceding 2 years and the outside experts are asked to critically evaluate the progress of each project.